M'Ilroy v Traill

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: V.-C.
• Judgment Date: 18 April 1898
• Court: Chancery Division (Ireland)
• Docket Number: (1896. No. 964.)
• Date: 18 April 1898

M'ilroy

and

Traill.

V.-C.

(1896. No. 964.)

CASES

DETERMINED BY

THE CHANCERY DIVISION

OF

THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE IN IRELAND,

AND ON APPEAL THEREFROM IN

THE COURT OF APPEAL.

1898.

Specific performance — Lease — Ante-dating — Injunction against pleading execution as of other date.

A judgment for the specific performance of an agreement for a lease directed the lease to be ante-dated:—

Held, that the judgment should also restrain the parties, in any action on the lease, from averring that same was of any other date.

Existing Irish practice adhered to.

This case was placed in the list to be spoken to on the minutes of the judgment, on an application by the defendant that the draft thereof should be altered by inserting a provision in the nature of an injunction which he claimed to be necessary for carrying out the decision of the Court.

The action was brought for specific performance of a verbal agreement made on the 1st May, 1896, by which the defendant agreed to take from the plaintiff a lease for a term of years from that date of certain houses then in course of erection, the plaintiff's property, and which under the agreement the plaintiff was to complete.

The defendant alleged that the plaintiff agreed to make the houses habitable, that this was a condition precedent to the execution of the lease, and that the plaintiff had not performed the condition; and defendant counterclaimed for damages.

On the trial of the action the Vice-Chancellor found that the completion by the plaintiff of the houses and making them habitable was not a condition precedent to the execution of the lease, but that this was a matter to be provided for by that document, and he pronounced judgment directing specific performance, the lease to be dated as of the 1st May, 1896, and on the defendant's application permitting him to withdraw his counterclaim.

The curial part of the judgment, dated 14th January, 1898, as drafted, was as follows:—

This Court doth declare that the plaintiff is entitled to have the verbal agreement for a lease in the third paragraph of the statement of claim in this action set forth specifically performed and carried into execution, and doth order and adjudge the same accordingly; and it is ordered that the several parties hereto do execute a lease in the terms of the verbal agreement as set forth in said third paragraph, said lease to bear date as of the 1st day of May, 1896, and to contain in addition to the ordinary covenants in such leases...